Free Blind Descent-pigeion 6 by Nevada Barr Page A

merely a grunt and a nod.
      Zeddie went around the circle. "Dr. Curtis Schatz." The big man with the furry chin looked up from where he sat. His eyes were obscured by glasses framed in mock tortoiseshell. The lenses caught the light and reflected back blank space.
      "Hello," he said in a flat voice that gave absolutely nothing away and left Anna feeling snubbed.
      "Two doctors," she said just to say something. "That's lucky."
      "Not really," Schatz drawled, but without Holden's Texas warmth. A "Tennis, anyone?" effeteness lent his words a snobbish air. "I'm a doctor of leisure and recreation."
      Anna laughed, realized it was not a joke, and laughed again. "Sorry," she said.
      "No problem." Schatz returned to his coffee. Again no handshake. Near the center of the earth, life tended toward the informal.
      "Curt's a professor of leisure and recreational studies-park planning stuff-with a state university in New York." Zeddie came to Anna's rescue with the biographical details. "He's sketching this trip."
      Anna remembered Oscar discussing survey team responsibilities. Always, when mapping, besides measuring distances and surveying angles, someone sketched the rooms, the landmarks, the passageways, formations, fossils, and anything else of interest they could squeeze in. Depending on the sketch artist, the drawings varied from stick-like cartoon pictures that documented where an object was and its rough shape, to things of beauty in and of themselves.
      "This is Brent Roxbury." Zeddie introduced the last of the strangers as if they'd not already raked him over the coals for his sartorial inelegance.
      Brent did shake hands. His grip was firm and dry, as apparently sincere as his asking after Frieda's health.
      "Brent's a geologist," Frieda said. "He teaches and does a lot of work for the Park Service and the BLM."
      Sondra had finished her hair. She pushed forward and stuck out her hand. "I'm a freelance writer," she said. The gesture, belated, and the announcement were out of place. Anna wasn't put off by it. Though she couldn't remember exactly when or why, she knew there'd been a time when she was younger that she'd felt as she imagined Sondra was feeling: ignored, undervalued, outclassed. Her husband was a doctor. He was probably fifteen years her senior. It had to be a hard act to follow. Anna took the proffered hand. The woman's grip was hard, competitive. Anna resisted an impulse to shriek and sink to her knees in exaggerated pain.
      "I write travel and adventure articles for the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch and travel magazines in America and Great Britain." Her credentials and resume complete, she dropped Anna's hand.
      At a loss for an appropriate response, Anna mumbled, "How do you do?" and left it at that.
      Holden was pinching his wrist, pressing the minuscule button on the side of his watch. In the ubiquitous gloom even the green glow of a Timex night-light shone vividly. It was 6:23-A.M., Anna assumed. There was no way of knowing, but her body suggested she'd gotten four hours' sleep, not sixteen. In an hour or less, the team that followed, bringing gear and rigging, should arrive. This would be one of the last times this group would be alone together. As soon as the others came, the machinery of the rescue effort would fall in place and they would be swept up in the momentum.
      It was on the tip of Anna's tongue to ask what had happened, how Frieda had come to be hurt, when Holden said, "Okay, before the world starts happening to us, let's go over what we're going to need. Just us chickens. Everybody else is extra."
      Anna was just as glad her question had been preempted. It was too late to catch the perpetrator-if there was a perpetrator-off guard. Everyone had ample time to perfect a story. But, had she asked, an official version would have been created by the simple expedient of publicly relating it. Hearing five unofficial versions might prove more enlightening.
      Holden